


for the glory of

by noun



Category: Black Jewels - Anne Bishop
Genre: Female Friendship, Gen, Misunderstandings, Pre-Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-17
Updated: 2019-12-17
Packaged: 2021-02-27 00:27:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,969
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21828241
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/noun/pseuds/noun
Summary: “Your daughter is very beautiful,” Wilhelmina says. She watches Karla’s lips twitch, a smile that turns sharp with a private amusement.“And I’m not?”Wilhelmina’s shoulders rise and fall.“You are not chasing the latest fashions. But your clothes are well-made, and the Grey is all the ornamentation you might need.”Karla raises her cup in something like a salute. “Not trying to sell me anything?”“No,” Wilhelmina demurs. “You don’t need what I offer.”
Relationships: Wilhelmina Benedict/Karla
Comments: 6
Kudos: 34
Collections: Yuletide 2019





	for the glory of

**Author's Note:**

  * For [snarkasaurus](https://archiveofourown.org/users/snarkasaurus/gifts).



“Mina,” Mhairi calls from the front of the house. “Lady Adair is here for you.”

Wilhelmina sets down her tea and runs her hand down the pleats of her skirt as she stands, then steps out of the room and descends the stairs onto the shop’s main floor. Elsbeth—Lady Adair, if they are to follow Protocol, which they ought, as Elspeth is the District Queen—waits at the bottom, as her Consort helps her remove the heavy wool cloak that he’d likely insisted upon for the journey here.

Wilhelmina notes with muted pleasure that the cloak was purchased here not a month ago.

“Mina,” Elsbeth says warmly, and holds out her arms. Wilhelmina smiles as she steps into the embrace and greets her with the customary quick cheek kiss. The smell of damp wool mixes with the honeysuckle oil and the physic scent of Elsbeth’s caste and Jewel. She’s pleased to note that Mhairi has disappeared to fetch the tea she serves to all her guests. 

Wilhelmina leads Elsbeth over to the chairs by the fire. Her Consort has been here often enough to know he may join them once he places his own damp coat by the door.

When she had first come to Kaeleer, Wilhelmina had wondered how she would provide for herself. Her worries had been dismissed quickly enough, and even before she had decided to come to Scelt over a decade ago, she had been made aware that the SaDiablo finances were at her disposal. Still, there was a difference between money that was given, and money that was earned. So, she had come to Scelt, begun using her father’s name—her real father’s—and set up something that wasn’t quite a store, but that still sold goods and services.

At Alexandra Angeline’s knee, and in her court, Wilhelmina had learned taste. When Protocol had been abandoned in Terreille, other secret codes had filled the void. Fashion, for one: all the little signals someone could send with an outfit about wealth and status. With so few Dark-Jeweled Blood, wealth meant more than power. And having money meant nothing—it was how you spent it.

Wilhelmina hadn’t been able to spend or try and play along, being too young and too frightened. But she’d watched and learned. Years later, in Kaeleer, where Protocol ruled, when she’d needed something to do with her life or she’d go mad, she had stumbled upon the idea of selling her upbringing. Witches who needed guidance—what to wear, where to find it—could come to something a bit more personal than a store, more intimate and gentler, and be offered options, assured that each one was well-tailored and tasteful. Wilhelmina could build a network of seamstresses, jewelers, cloth merchants, and haberdashers all over the Realm, and assure for herself a comfortable, quiet, life.

Elsbeth had been recommended by an older aunt who came to Wilhelmina for her spider silk. The girl was the adopted daughter of a Warlord Prince and his husband. The Prince, an immigrant from Terreille, had declined placementin a court after his mandatory years of service were completed, and sought a discrete guiding—and more importantly, feminine—hand for his daughter before her debut as a Queen. Wilhelmina had made several suggestions, to delight of both fathers and daughter, and years later, Elsbeth still came to her first when she needed additions to her wardrobe. 

“So,” Wilhemina said, after Mhairi had served the tea to all three of them and removed herself with all discretion. “What are you looking for today?”

Elsbeth smiles down at her tea, cupping the porcelain in both hands. “Something for Winsol.”

Wilhelmina smiles, settling into a kind of matronly knowing. 

“A dress for each night?” she wonders, and the Consort perks up at that. He’d wither at the cost, but the love between them is so saccharine right now, he might choose it over good sense.

“No,” she says quickly. “No, nothing like that. Just one, please, Mina. Something I can wear to Court, if I have the skirt or sleeves shortened.”

Wilhelmina pretends to consider. In truth, Mhairi is already selecting the dress she had ordered a month ago, and choosing suitable shoes, dyed and undyed, and a scattering of accessories to be cooed over. If Elsbeth rejects the first dress, there is another. If that is rejected, she’ll need to pull something from the stash she keeps for difficult customers and have it tailored. 

But Elsbeth is not difficult, which is why she is so fond of her.

“Something in a jewel tone, I think,” she pretends to suggest, casually, pleased when Elsbeth nods along. “Your Birthright was Purple Dusk, was it not?”

Opal is such a difficult color to pull off in fabric—but a rich purple will be a much better foil to her almost-red hair, far better than the greens she knows the other District Queens will go for. Wilhelmina rings a small silver bell, and soon Mhairi reappears, to be asked to go and fetch the box ‘in the back’. Mhairi plays along, and returns with a box that Elspeth opens reverently, pulling back crepe paper to reveal a gown that makes her sigh in pleasure.

The Queen buys it, as well as matching house slippers, and while she is by the window, her Consort makes a discreet inquiry about a pair of fur-lined mittens, which he hides in his own coat. It is just as well—the matching male’s pair are already in Elspeth’s account. 

After a hearty goodbye, and another cup of tea, Elspeth and her Consort leave, a black bag in his hand. It bears no logo—it needs none. Mina Alexander’s reputation is enough.

Pleased with a good day’s work, she dismisses Mhairi early. As the sun sets, Wilhelmina sets the Sapphire shield around the building, extinguishes the lights on the bottom floor, and goes upstairs to her private rooms, where she will bathe, eat supper, feed her cat, and read a novel until she falls asleep.

It is not a bad life.

* * *

Karla considers the report in her lap with a critical eye and sets down her tea. 

“Della,” she says, and her daughter looks up from where she sits on the floor, her back to the fire and a novel in her lap. “Check these sums for me, darling.”

Della, the daughter of her soul if not her blood, rises and reaches for the Territory’s accounting of tribute and Landen taxes. She runs down the columns, her lips moving as she does the sums. Karla trusts her District and Province Queens, but ever since the nonsense with Dena Nehele a few years ago, she takes an extra look at the accounts, simply to be sure, down to the smallest villages. As Della will have her own court soon, small as Karla can get away with while still according to her what is due (no more young women thrust into situations they shouldn’t be—), she must be able to do the same.

Starting from the new year, Karla will have her do all the accounts on her own.  
“What time is our appointment tomorrow?” she asks, her eyes already on the numbers, the point of her nail tracing along the rows. 

“Noon,” Karla says. The warmth of the fire is welcome on her legs. “You have some idea of what you want, I hope.” 

She doesn’t mean it to come out half as sharp as it does. The idea of spending hour after hour shopping, of being shown this gown and that, is not appealing to her. There are better uses of her time, of Della’s— but Della is a young woman, and deserves the indulgence. There is a middle ground between frivolity and absolutely disregard of fashion, and Karla will find it.

“And after, we’ll be having lunch with the Territory Queen, Morghann. I’ve known her since I was a girl. You should see how courts are run outside of Glacia.”

Della only hums in response, still working down the numbers. She rakes a hand through her hair, careless enough to mean she’s deep in thought, and Karla settles back into her chair with a deep sigh. No, there is no chance of Della turning into some empty-headed creature, no chance of behavior like Dena Nehele happening in her Territory. The Taint had been purged from the Blood, and no one in Kahleer knew it better than the daughters and sons of Glacia, but vigilance was their best defense against it creeping back in like a weed.

The soft scratch of Della’s writing, as well as the fire’s heat, lulls her into tranquility. The heat and the soft scratch of Della’s writing lull her into tranquility. A Queen’s duties are never completed, and Karla does not tire of her duty, but the placidity of the moment is a welcome and brief reprieve. A reminder that they are at peace, that she need not fear assassins, or anything more pressing than—

“Done,” Della says, and lays her pen down, stretching out to offer the papers to Karla. Taking them, she sets them on the table next to her cooled tea. They can wait. Della, meanwhile, has already taken up her novel once more, chin on her palm and utterly absorbed.

Karla was never that careless. There was always the anticipation since her parents and Morton’s were murdered, the foresight of what was coming. Now, with all the tension gone, what had swept into the void that the absence of that heavy burden had left hollow? She is a woman grown now, a ruling Queen for more than half her life. She has already found her successor in her daughter. 

Without thinking, she Calls in her Birthright, toying with the brooch she had it reset in, feeling the facets under her thumb.

Karla feels more than sees Della hesitate, but her daughter does not do or say anything, and so neither does Karla.

All the excitement, the great adventure— it has all passed, spent when Karla was little more than a child. And where she should find fulfillment in peace, in duty, the more than occasional joys that the life of a well-appointed Queen (a Territory Queen, at that) enjoys, she still yearns for something. 

“Damn,” Karla says, abrupt, and Della does glance up. “Talking to myself, darling, nothing to concern yourself with.”  
Della looks like she wants to say something, the barely parted lips, the inhale— yet says nothing.

She thinks nothing of it, already wondering if she ought to weave a Tangled Web, but dismisses the idea almost instantly. No. Better to stew in her discontent until her duty distracts her, or she comes to a solution. She’ll have plenty of time for her woolgathering tomorrow, she supposes ruefully.

* * *

Two weeks before Winsol, and the march of clients has slowed to two, perhaps three in a day. Wilhelmina is confident she will see more after the holiday. What appointments she has already made already fill several days, and the gaps will be patched with post-holiday requests. She will only be seeing one client today, a mother-daughter Queen pair who was introduced by way of letter via a previous client.

The quiet is not unpleasant. She savors every moment when she can be mindful. This is not the life she imagined for herself. It is a good one. Contentment, Wilhelmina supposes, ought not to be handled like a dirty word..

Mhairi comes to work through the back door. Wilhelmina feels her pass through the shields, and feels the reverberation of craft as she melts the snow off her boots and leaves them by the door. She looks surprised to find her employer in the kitchen with a mugful of coffee, caught mid-scarf unraveling, but the younger woman smiles and tidies herself as if Wilhelmina isn’t there. By the time she’s done, Wilhelmina’s finished her coffee, and they have a quarter-hour before the first and only clients arrive. Mhairi sets the tea to boil, while Wilhelmina fetches the pieces she’s set aside and places them within easy reach. 

Mhairi is still setting the tray when the shields ripple with dark-Jeweled feminine energy— the Grey. Wilhelmina inhales, sharp, on something too definite to be called merely a suspicion.

They’re early, and Wilhelmina answers the door with a smile, the usual gesture. She does not flinch, but Karla does. To her credit, it is not a large flinch, nor is the Queen left insensate by the realization, the familiar— if a handful of meetings could be called familiar— face. 

“Please,” Wilhelmina says, and steps back, so that Karla can wheel herself in. “Do come in.”

Karla’s daughter, another Queen, is obviously not her blooded daughter. They both have the Glacian coloring, but there is nothing in the young woman’s face but the faintest trace of Karla’s mannerisms. Aside from the flinch, Karla gives nothing away, even at the looks her daughter— Lady Della— shoots her.

Wilhelmina leads the conversation. What they are here for, what Lady Della likes, her dislikes— all touched upon in the letter. However, she would be remiss not to discuss them in person, to hear the young woman herself answer, to see her hesitate or proclaim enthusiastically, and then watch her mother’s reaction. Wilhelmina has made an art of it.

They drink tea, and Wilhelmina rings for Mhairi, makes a few quiet requests. Then the boxes begin arriving, to be opened and displayed, for Della to begin sorting through what she actually wants to try on.

She is being sedate, Wilhelmina knows, choosing fewer things than she might like to, the picture of restraint, constantly checking back with her mother, as if expecting her to be... not unkind, she supposes. Della sits straight and tall and there is no flinch in her, no bend in her spine, a good Queen. Wilhelmina thinks Della expects her mother is not enjoying this as she is, and worries for the disparity. 

And where Della sneaks looks at Karla between delight at shoes and dresses and purses, Karla sneaks looks at Wilhelmina herself, much to Wilhemina’s mounting concern. Karla ought to be more discrete.

After the girl has built up a respectable pile, Wilhelmina summons Mhairi once more.

Instead of the lavishly curtained-off corner that, say, Elsbeth used, Wilhelmina instead sends her to a private dressing room at the end of the hall. Better to give Della the chance to examine herself first, determine her favorites, and then allow her mother to see. She is going to debut; she is of the age to strategize and weed out unsuitable options.

And, as a bonus, she might lose herself enough to stop fretting about Karla’s lack of enthusiasm.

Mhairi’s arms filled with gowns, and a small parade of Craft-spelled boxes floating behind her, the two depart for the room and leave Karla and Wilhelmina alone.

The silence between them does not last a full minute.

“I didn’t know you’d moved to Scelt,” Karla finally says.

Wilhelmina refills the Queen’s teacup first, as Protocol calls for, and then her own. It is tepid, but still good.

“No,” Wilhelmina says. “I kept it to myself, and no one asked.”

She watches Karla drink from her cup, and searches for a way to fill the silence. She is too aware that any comment is likely to produce silence rather than enough conversation to fill the gaps between them. 

Still.

“Your daughter is very beautiful,” Wilhelmina says. She watches Karla’s lips twitch, a smile that turns sharp with a private amusement.

“And I’m not?”

Wilhelmina’s shoulders rise and fall. “You are not chasing the latest fashions. But your clothes are well-made, and the Grey is all the ornamentation you might need.”

Karla raises her cup in something like a salute. “Not trying to sell me anything?”

“No,” Wilhelmina demurs. “You don’t need what I offer.”

This seems to settle Karla a bit. She leans back into her chair, still holding her cup. “When do you leave for Winsol?”

“I do not. I celebrate here.”

Karla is genuinely surprised. Wilhelmina holds steady, and does not respond to the raised eyebrow, the pointed look. Karla eventually puts her cup down, and Wilhelmina glances down the hallway. There is no sign of Della, and Mhairi knows not to interrupt.

“Were you uncomfortable with any of the things I selected for her?” It is too personal by half, but she knows Karla. Had known her, some time ago.

“No,” Karla says, the answer too quick to be anything but genuine. “I wouldn’t wear them myself, but, if Della likes them...”

She waves her hand in the air, gesturing to something as ephemeral as some of the worst offending gowns.

“The fashion is for lower-cut gowns, but I do not usually keep the style in stock,” Wilhelmina admits, nearly despite herself. She ought not to be discussing it with a client, and yet, it is now just another slip of familiarity.

“She hardly needs the enticement,” Karla says, wry. “She’ll form a court with little trouble, even without her tits out.” 

“That is not what I meant.”

“I know,” sighs Karla. “I’ve seen it once or twice- a lighter-Jeweled Queen, trying to attract a stronger male through a variety of enticements. Nothing so bad as...”

The one thing neither of them need words to be reminded of. Nor is there a clever euphemism for it. And even with the cleansing of the blood, there had still been Dena Nehele.

“... but still a few cases where males had ended up somewhere that a few day’s cool-down might have kept them from.”

Wilhelmina nods. “It... has never been so bad as that here.”

Karla bursts out, suddenly, “The idea that a witch would need to wear something for a male! Can you imagine if we had needed to focus on that sort of thing, if the males here had gotten more of a foothold--”

When Wilhelmina cut in with an emphatic “Yes,” Karla seemed to remember, writ plain on her face for Wilhelmina to see, she had grown up in Terreille. She knew better than Karla herself.

The embarrassment quiets them both for a moment.

“After my uncle started... lingering, I wore my cousin’s clothes. It slowed my uncle for a while.” Karla lays these things out slowly,. “My legs sealed the matter. I would never have to fret about a male joining my court because he wanted to bed me. Which was a relief— nothing to prove, nothing to lose. I suppose I wouldn’t have needed to. I’m one of the darker Jeweled Queens; that would have drawn them. But still, the idea that some might have wanted to and pressed the point beyond good behavior disgusted me.”

Wilhelmina takes her time to give her answer, her eyes first on her cup of tea. “My grandmother remarked to me not long before I left that she supposed women dressed like they were pleasure slaves because it was the last advantage we would have over males, if things kept changing as they were.”

Karla laughed.

“We’re two of a kind,” Karla wheezed out, between breaths. “Both of us, making decisions because of males while trying to have nothing to do with them at all.”

Wilhelmina smiles over the rim of her cup.

Karla catches her breath, and wipes a tear from her eye. “There wasn’t time to talk about it when we were younger, was there? We were all so young. And I haven’t talked about it since. Who would understand?”

“No one,” Wilhelmina says. She lowers the cup back to her lap. “And no one should.”

“So we’re doomed to be lonely?” Karla cuts back.

“No,” she says. “No, but I would hardly want the next generation to know about it. No war stories. Dena Nehele and similar incidents will be enough.”

Halfway through the sentence, and Wilhelmina hears the door down the hall open, and the rapid clip of heels down the hallway and back to them. She looks at Karla, jaw tightening, and Karla looks away. 

Good.

Della sweeps back into the room, heedless of the tension or accustomed to it. The latter, Wilhelmina supposes, given who and what her mother is.

Already, Wilhelmina is standing, tea abandoned, to fuss with the shoulder seams of the dress with Craft and fingers both. She sets Karla to the side, all the long-buried thoughts and memories to the side, and pulls up Della’s confidence as helps the girl narrow the field of gowns from ten to four, two pairs of shoes, and a handful of accessories. Karla is silent the entire time. 

When Della is satisfied, Wilhelmina calls for Mhairi, and rather than wait with Karla once more, she busies herself with taking the tea service back to the kitchen. She wonders on her own cowardice as she cleans the fine porcelain by hand, not Craft, and only when she is sure Mhairi is done, and arranging for payment at the desk, does she step back out.

Karla is by the fire, her hands in her lap, her eyes downward. Mhairi and Della chatter, settling boxes into bags. Wilhelmina goes not to them, but to Karla. 

She regrets it almost at once. What is she going to do, offer to wheel the Queen out, when she is perfectly capable? Apologize, when she does not regret her words, and Karla would know it for a falsehood? She chose Scelt so that she might have some peace: no tethers, no reminders.

“I’m sorry,” Karla says. Mhairi stops folding the dress, more a reaction to Della glancing back towards the two of them, and Wilhelmina snaps from her woolgathering. “I’m still bitter over everything. We lost so much. I’m afraid that…”

Wilhelmina can’t stand to listen to Queens admitting fear. On impulse, she snatches for Karla’s hand, holding it in her own, and kneels down to be at eye level with the other woman.

“You are forgiven,” she says. “Wholly.”

“You manage to be so serene about it,” Karla says. 

Wilhelmina falls into the question, shaking her head. “I wished I was bolder, as a girl. I fear I only learned how to blend in. To be perfectly acceptable. To play the part.”

Karla looks down at Wilhelmina’s hand, absently turns it palm down. Wilhelmina’s nails, recently varnished and shorn short, are a pale shade of pink. She leans forward, and Wilhelmina, on her knees, cannot back away to avoid the intimacy. Nor can she pull her hand away before Karla folds her own around it.

“What you offer,” Karla says, and her lips twist into a smirk. Wilhelmina anticipates cruelty. It is still reflex. And yet— “You’re not selling clothing at all, are you? Oh, I’m sure it’s plain as day to everyone with half a brain, but I missed it at first. How clever. It’s the confidence. The subtlety. Very well done.”

Karla confides, murmuring against her ear. Wilhelmina shivers, and squeezes her hand. She stands, but Karla doesn’t let go.

“I’ll send a letter, let you know when I’ll next be in the Territory. We can get dinner,” Karla says, now at normal volume.

Karla’s fingertips press into the thin skin at her wrist. It is not much, just enough to be disregarded, misattributed. She can feel the heat of the other woman’s fingers, and then they drag away, and are gone. But Karla’s smile remains, and Wilhelmina thinks— this could be more. If she reached for it, Karla would give it to her willingly. 

There is a shared history here. She would not need to explain, to bring back up the fine detail of things better resigned to the past. She would not be in shadow. She would be understood. They could speak of new things, and the future.

“Please do,” she says.

**Author's Note:**

> Happy Yuletide! It was a pleasure to write for you this year, and I hope the story fulfills all your hopes. Thank you for requesting ladies so dear to my heart.


End file.
